Maui, Early, a Night of Bad Dreams Poem by Lyn Lifshin

From before it's LIGHT

flung back, like palm fronds in
rose and guava wind


to five years ago
it could have been this
same day I


walked out from Hui Nuis,
ants, a necklace around the
bed like
dark stones


sun burns thru blue haze,
my mother shriveling. I was sure,
like the bamboo and camellias,
she'd flourish in the sun,


wrote her postcards each day,
imagined swooping her up
from the room half underground in Stowe


a just born, an
almost-mummy, the musk a
bluelight world


like adding water
to dried petals,
pulled back to the living,


saw us under the banyan,
nothing to scorch or chill


but like a rare cure from the
rain forests, turn her
white hair ebony again
in the pineapple wind
she'd doze and wake ravenous in